by Dave Stern
“An outside observer. The Denari have to have records.”
“We thought of that,” Archer said. “We need data from the other side of the anomaly as well—from our universe. That’s our real problem.”
Everyone was silent a moment.
“What if…” Trip said hesitantly. “The orbital platform—the one the Denari in our universe were building. Would that have what we need?”
“If they spotted us, I suppose it might,” T’Pol said. “A rather large ‘if,’ considering we were trying to remain hidden. And even supposing the platform’s instruments do contain the data we need, how do we get at it? We are, literally, a universe apart.”
Trip smiled. “The mine got through. What if a communications signal could as well?”
“You’re proposing we contact the Denari back in our universe from this one?”
“Yes, sir.”
“It is an…interesting idea.” T’Pol nodded to herself, and Archer could see her mind working as she spoke. “The anomaly has many of the same characteristics as a subspace field node. It is theoretically possible that a properly modulated signal could be transmitted through it. We could not be certain of reaching the correct universe, but…”
“Possible?” the captain asked. “How long would it take to find out if the idea would work?”
“Couple of days,” Trip said. “Modify the carrier signal, try and isolate the Denari outpost…” He looked to T’Pol. “Sound right?”
She nodded. “At a minimum.”
“Captain,” Trip pointed out, “Professor Brodesser might be able to help out on this.”
Archer nodded. “I was thinking the same thing. Why don’t you ask him?”
“I would if I could find time. Makandros keeps calling every half hour. He’s contacted us twice this morning already about seeing the kid. Took a good deal of persuading to keep him from coming over here personally.”
“Is that a yes?”
Trip threw up his hands in defeat. “Yes. I’ll talk to him.”
“Good.” Archer smiled. “And I’ll go talk to Lee.”
T’Pol frowned. “Lee?”
“The boy. Sadir’s son. That’s his name.”
She nodded.
Archer felt her gaze on him, weighing his intentions.
He felt it on him, in fact, all the way down to the boy’s quarters.
The boy was still on C-deck, halfway around the saucer from where he’d been, in an unused crew cabin. Yamani was on guard duty. Archer nodded to him as he stepped up to the door com and pressed it.
“Who is it?”
“Captain Archer, Lee. Can I talk to you?”
Silence.
“I want to be alone.”
“I can understand that. I just want a minute of your time.”
There was no answer. Archer was about to try again when the door opened. He entered.
Lee was sitting in a chair, staring at a blank workstation screen, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. Again, the captain was struck by his uncanny resemblance to the young Henry Archer. Then he noticed something else: the bed behind him hadn’t been slept on.
“You’ve been up all night?”
“I’m not tired.” The boy continued to stare at the screen, his expression unreadable. There were big, dark circles under his eyes.
“Phlox tells me you haven’t been eating either.”
“I’m not hungry. My stomach still feels a little queasy.”
“You need to eat. What happened to you before—Doctor Trant explained what the problem was, didn’t she?”
The captain knew for a fact she had: Phlox had told him so. The doctor had also told him that Lee had a firmer grasp on the theory—quantum mechanics, parallel universes—than Phlox himself did.
Gets that from his paternal grandfather, a little voice inside his head said.
Archer squashed it.
“She did.”
“So that if you stick to eating the foods Colonel Peranda brought over—”
“I understand. I’m just not hungry.”
“Lee…”
“I’m fine, Captain.”
“No food, no sleep…you won’t be for long.” Archer sat down on the bed near him. “If you want, I can have the doctor prescribe something to help you rest.”
“Drugs?” The boy shook his head. “No. My father used to say it was important to face your problems, not hide from them.”
“My father used to say the same thing. But in order to face your problems, you need a clear head. And for that, you need to rest. Let me get you some medicine.”
“I understand. I appreciate your concern,” Lee said, sounding like he couldn’t give a damn about Archer’s concern. Or anything else, for that matter. And who could blame him, really?
“A lot of people are concerned about you, Lee.”
The boy shook his head.
“They don’t care about me. They care about who I am. Do you understand? They used to say they wanted to be my friend, but what they really wanted was to use me to get close to my father.”
“Not everyone is like that.”
“The people I know are.”
“I’m sure you had friends—people your own age…”
The boy shook his head. “I didn’t.”
“From school—”
“I didn’t go to school. I had tutors. They were my friends. Doctor Oav. Maj Wooler. General Elson.”
Archer blinked.
“Elson was one of your tutors?”
The boy nodded. “For military history. Strategy. But he taught me other things too. How to watch the people around me, how to judge what they were really thinking. We played it like a game.”
And he taught you how not to trust anyone, Archer thought but didn’t say. He wondered if Elson hadn’t been planning something like this coup he was attempting for a very long time.
Makandros and Lind had their work cut out for them.
“They want me to turn against him now, don’t they? The Guild, and General Makandros.”
“They want to stop a war from breaking out.”
“But sometimes you have to fight. It’s a leader’s responsibility to decide when. That’s what my father told me. He said that was the hardest decision of his life—deciding that he had to fight the Presidium. Take over from them.”
The boy looked up at Archer, his eyes fierce, determined.
“He was a great man, my father. Everything I am, I owe to him. I hope I can be worthy of his memory someday.”
The captain held his tongue. Not exactly the picture of Sadir that Trip had painted for him, but then, what did he expect, given the source?
“If he fought to bring peace to your world,” Archer said, choosing his words carefully, “then don’t you owe it to his memory to try and keep that peace? However you can?”
“I’m not going to turn on my friends just because they say so. They’re all I have left.”
His voice broke on the last word. A tear trickled down his cheek.
“Sorry,” he said, sniffling. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand.
At that moment, he looked more like a kid than at any time since the captain had met him. A lost, lonely, frightened kid.
“That’s all right, Lee. Let it out.”
“I can’t stop thinking about her. And about my father. What I’m going to do without them around.”
“Maybe I can help you.”
The boy looked up at him again, but remained silent. After a few seconds, the captain went on. “I know you don’t really know me, Lee, but I’d like to be your friend. No ulterior motives.”
“You’re not going to make me talk to the Guild?”
“I’m not going to make you do anything you don’t want to,” Archer said. “That’s a promise.”
The boy nodded. “If I did go see them—the Guild—would you come with me?”
Archer sighed heavily. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because…” He
couldn’t make the lie he’d told Makandros—that he was still weak from his injuries—come out. And he couldn’t tell him the truth, either. “I just can’t, Lee. I’m sorry. Commander Tucker will go with you, though. Okay?”
The boy nodded. “Okay.”
But it wasn’t. Archer could see it in his eyes. The connection he’d just made with the boy was slipping away.
And all at once, Archer had an idea.
“Hold on a second,” he said, smiling. “I’ll be right back.”
And he was, a few minutes later. But not by himself.
Porthos trotted into the room alongside him.
Lee was sitting on the edge of the bed. The boy’s eyes widened when he saw the dog.
“What is that?”
“This,” he said, smiling, “is Porthos.”
As if on cue, the animal bounded into bed alongside Lee, and tried to lick his face. The boy pulled back, frightened.
Of course. He’d never seen a dog before.
“Down, Porthos,” Archer commanded. “Get off that bed.”
The dog paid him no mind.
Archer pulled a treat out of his pocket and held it up.
“Porthos,” he called. But the dog’s sense of smell had already picked up the new scent. Porthos leapt down and bounded back to the captain, tail wagging happily.
“Sit,” Archer said, holding the treat higher.
Porthos sat.
Lee looked on, fascinated.
“He’s trained.”
“Barely.” He gave Porthos the treat. The dog wagged his tail and barked.
“Another?”
Porthos barked again, in agreement.
“You’ll have to perform.” The captain caught Lee’s eye and smiled. “Roll over.”
Porthos looked at him quizzically.
“Go on,” Archer said, motioning with his hand. “Roll over.”
Porthos barked again.
The captain laughed. “Close enough. Good boy,” he said, and gave Porthos another piece. The dog lay down on the floor and began munching away. Archer knelt down next to him and scratched behind his ears.
Lee padded over, barefoot, and stood by the captain.
“He likes it.”
“That’s right.”
“Can I try?”
“Sure.”
He showed the boy where Porthos liked to be scratched. Lee had it in no time flat.
The captain had a split second of wondering if the protein intolerance would make the boy—or the dog—allergic to each other before he remembered Trip and Trant, and realized that if physical contact was capable of causing those problems, his chief engineer would have said something about it.
“Why does his tail move back and forth?”
“That means he likes what you’re doing.”
“His name is Porthos, you said.”
“That’s right.”
“That’s a strange name, isn’t it?”
“An old-fashioned name. It’s from a book—a famous Earth book, The Three Musketeers.”
Lee looked at him blankly.
“It’s in the ship’s library. You can access it from the workstation later, if you like. Right now, though, you really should get some rest.”
“Okay.” The boy stood, and for the first time, gave Archer an honest-to-goodness smile. Archer smiled back.
Porthos jumped up on the bed again.
“Hey.” Lee frowned. “That’s my spot.”
“Come on, Porthos. Get down.”
The dog whined.
“I think he likes it up there,” Lee said.
Porthos turned in a circle and settled himself down on top of a pillow.
“He’ll stay there all day, if you let him.”
“Can he?” The boy’s eyes shone with excitement.
“If you like.”
The boy nodded and climbed into bed. Porthos made room for him—barely—then licked his face and settled back down.
“Don’t be afraid to push him away when he does that.”
“I won’t,” Lee said, stifling a yawn.
“Good. I’ll be back in a few hours. We can talk some more then.”
Archer turned for the door, the smile still on his face. If he’d been a betting man, he would have laid odds that Lee would be fast asleep by the time it closed behind him.
No sooner had it done that, though, than the com sounded.
“Bridge to Archer.”
The captain opened a channel.
“Right here, Trip. What’s going on?”
“Better get up here, sir. All hell’s breaking loose.”
Twenty-Three
TRIP STEPPED ASIDE and let the captain take the command chair.
“Let me see the recording first,” Archer said.
Trip nodded to Carstairs, on communications, who brought up the transmission they’d received not ten minutes ago. Elson’s image filled the viewer.
Now, as before, one word came to mind when Trip looked at the general: patrician. Elson had silver hair, sharp features, and a reasoned, calm manner. A born leader.
Probably just what he was counting on.
“Citizens of Denari. In light of the attacks by Guild forces on our planet and in the outer system—in particular, their capture of our base at Kota—it becomes necessary for me to convene the Council of Generals here in the Kresh, and ask them to grant me a temporary appointment as overall force commander. I do this in the interests of our planet, in the interests of justice, and in memory of those brave citizens who have given their lives in this struggle—those who have made the ultimate sacrifice to help defeat anarchy and chaos, in the form of the Guild and their allies. I ask for your support in this endeavor, and your prayers. In moments such as these—”
“Stop it there,” Archer said. On-screen, Elson’s image froze. “What’s that mean? Overall force commander?”
“Elson’s taking control,” Trip said. “Eliminating the opposition. At least, that’s what Makandros was saying.” Along with a number of other, more choice turns of phrase, which Trip didn’t feel the need to share with the captain right now. “Sir, they’re getting pretty anxious about the kid.”
“I’m working on it,” the captain said. “He’s not exactly a prime candidate for conversion to their cause right now.” Archer filled him in on what the boy had said regarding General Elson.
“Makandros won’t like hearing that.”
“Which is why we’re not going to tell him,” the captain said. “I’m going to let the boy sleep a bit. He was up all night. Maybe he’ll feel differently after some rest.”
“Maybe.” Trip frowned. Let the kid sleep? At a time like this?
He wondered if there wasn’t something to what T’Pol had said before, about the captain regarding Leeman Sadir as both kin and responsibility. That would only make their job even harder.
As if on cue, the com system sounded.
“It’s the general, sir,” Carstairs said.
“Tell him to hang on a minute.” Archer stood. “Go on, take it. I’ll listen in the ready room.”
Trip waited until the door had closed behind the captain before giving Carstairs the signal.
The general did not look happy.
“Six hours,” Makandros said without preamble. “That’s how long we have now, Tucker. I thought you might want to know that.”
“Sir?”
“Six hours until the Council meets and hands all power to Elson. Once that happens, there’s nothing anyone can do to prevent all-out war. Not even Leeman Sadir.”
Trip nodded. “I understand, General. Thank you for keeping us apprised of the situation.”
Makandros’s eyes were cold fire. “That’s all? ‘I understand’? When countless thousands are poised to die, and you hold the one person who could save them hostage on your ship? ‘I understand’?”
“He’s not a hostage,” Trip said.
“Then why won’t you let me talk to him?”
Trip s
truggled for an answer. Com noise came over the channel for a second. Then another voice sounded.
“This is Captain Archer, General. You’ll be able to speak to the boy in a few hours.”
“Archer?” On-screen, Makandros frowned. “Where are you? I have no visual.”
“None is being transmitted at the moment,” the captain said. “The boy is still recuperating from his injuries. He’ll be able to speak to you soon.”
“Soon? Didn’t you hear? We have six hours—less, as a practical matter. Once the other Council members enter the Kresh, they’re in Elson’s power. There’ll be no changing their minds then.”
“I understand.”
“You and Tucker—so understanding.” Makandros’s glare returned. Trip could hear the anger in his voice, hear him barely holding that anger in check. “You have no right to interfere in our affairs like this. Leeman Sadir is Denari.”
“And human,” Archer said.
More human than you know, Trip thought.
“Besides,” the captain continued, “as I recall, you interfered with us in the first place. Or have you forgotten that?”
There was silence for a moment.
“I cannot waste time like this any longer,” Makandros said. “We have plans of our own to make.” He closed the circuit without another word.
Trip frowned at the blank screen.
That went just about as poorly as he’d feared.
Archer appeared in the ready room doorway.
“Looks like Lee’s going to have to learn to do without sleep.”
“Why should he be any different than the rest of us?”
Archer managed a small smile. “I’m going to give him a couple hours.”
“Cutting it close, sir.”
“No sense in waking him if he’s going to act the same way,” the captain replied, a slight edge to his voice.
Trip nodded. “Yes, sir. A couple hours.”
He supposed that made sense.
It clearly wasn’t anything Archer was going to change his mind about, anyway.
Eclipse had contacted Enterprise as well, almost immediately after Elson’s announcement had been broadcast. On a far less contentious matter than Leeman Sadir.
It was that matter that brought Trip to sickbay now, to the isolation chamber at one end of the bay and the man who lay unconscious within it. Ferik Reeve. He had been recovering for the last twenty-four hours, healing from the treatment Phlox had given him. He was sleeping peacefully, his features arranged into a small smile, his face unlined, worry-free.
